Are we our work? Paul Lafargue’s A Right to Be Lazy
Are we our work? Paul Lafargue’s A Right to Be Lazy
Paul Lafargue’s A Right to Be Lazy is a spirited defense of idleness. Lafargue, Karl Marx’s son-in-law (about whom Marx once said, “If he is a Marxist, then I am clearly not”) wrote his pamphlet while imprisoned for giving a socialist speech in the late 19th century. In his famous opening, Lafargue writes of the “moribund passion for work” as a “strange madness [that] has taken hold of the working class in nations where capitalist civilization reigns.” Vigorously deriding what we might now call “hustle culture,” or the compulsion to produce at all costs, Lafargue’s irreverent takedown of the drive to work ourselves to death resonates in this time of quiet quitting and The Great Resignation. This is a new translation of Lafargue’s classic by Alex Andriesse and includes other writings by Lafargue in addition to the title manifesto.
This class will explore the enduring question: Are we our work?
“What do you do?” This is typically the first question we’re asked when we meet someone new. What if we weren’t defined by our work? Who would we be? What place does idleness have in the human experience?
The Italian expression dolce far niente (‘it is sweet to do nothing’) is one perspective on the joy we can find in lazy days. But what does it mean to do nothing? Is thinking “nothing”? What about taking a walk in nature? When we talk about idleness, we often mean those times when we are not being productive, and many Americans struggle with time that isn’t considered productive. Idless can lead to flourishing, but it can also lead us to feelings of restlessness and a sense of purposelessness. Many of us find idleness difficult to embrace, and we do whatever we can to avoid “empty” time. Why? Is laziness a privilege or a right?
Annie Dillard observed that “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” In this course, we’ll explore the ways we define ourselves by how we spend our time.